Kail Harbick the fifth houseguest evicted from CBS' 'Big Brother 8'

By Steve Rogers, 08/10/2007

Kail Harbick, a married 37-year-old business owner from McKenzie Bridge, OR, became the fifth houseguest evicted from Big Brother's eighth season during last night's live broadcast of the long-running CBS reality show.

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Kail, who had been nominated for eviction by fifth Head of Household Danielle Donato, a single 20-year-old waitress from Huntington Beach, CA, was evicted via a tight 4-3 vote in which Eric Stein, a single 27-year-old New York City talent management assistant that unbeknownst to the rest of the houseguests, has secretly serving as "America's Player," received three votes.

Instead, Danielle had been hoping to "backdoor" Eric and nominate him for eviction after convincing the week's subsequent Power of Veto winner (which could have also ended up being her) to use their prize to remove Kail or Jen from the chopping block. Danielle had decided to target Eric after she and Dick "Evil Dick" Donato, her 44-year-old estranged father, had come to blame Eric for last week's eviction of Nick Starcevic, a 25-year-old former professional football player that Danielle, despite having a live-in boyfriend waiting for her back home, had begun developing feelings for.

Although they later came up with additional reasons to target Eric, Danielle and Dick's decision had originally been motivated by Danielle's belief that Eric had been the houseguest that secretly cast a stray Week 3 vote for Kail's eviction (Week 5 had represented Kail's third consecutive eviction nomination) and the move had been part of an elaborate plan aimed at demonstrating Nick was untrustworthy and ensuring his subsequent Week 4 elimination. In actuality, while Eric had indeed been the source of the secret vote, as "America's Player," his vote had been determined by the votes of the show's home viewers, not by his own motivations.

Unfortunately for Danielle and Dick, once they decided to backdoor Eric they immediately shared their plans with Jessica Hughbanks, a 21-year-old college student from Haysville, KS that has emerged as one of Eric's closest house allies. Jessica promptly shared the "backdoor" plan with Eric, giving him plenty of time to notify Jameka Cameron, Dustin Erikstrup and Amber Siyavus -- the other three members of the fairly loose "Late Night Crew" alliance that had previously also included Danielle and Dick -- of Danielle and Dick's plan and get their assurances that even if Danielle did nominate Eric as a replacement nominee, they would not vote for his eviction.

Danielle's plan to nominate Eric as a replacement nominee ended up coming to fruition as the result of Jen's ability to win "The Numbers Don't Lie," the Power of Veto competition that aired as part of Big Brother 8's Tuesday night broadcast. Similar to last year's Big Brother 7: All-Stars Power of Veto competition that resulted in George "Chicken" Boswellshaving his head and agreeing to eat nothing but "Big Brother slop" for the remainder of his stay in the Big Brother house, "The Numbers Don't Lie" was a "how bad do you want it"-style showdown aimed at determining who would sacrifice the most to win the week's veto right.

Although Jen ultimately won the week's veto, she paid a very high price to do so. In addition to agreeing to wear a bunny suit for the next five days (a burden that Kail, Danielle and Zach Swerdzewski, a single 30-year-old graphic designer from Burbank, CA, also ended up bearing), agreeing to dump pails of "funky" cesspool-like liquid on her head every hour for the next 24 hours (a burden that Kail, Danielle and Zach also all agreed to), and agreeing to eat nothing but "slop" for the next 30 days (a restriction Kail also agreed to), Jen also agreed that, should she end up as Big Brother 8's eventual winner, she will only receive half of the show's $500,000 prize.

However while Jen paid a high price for her PoV victory, Jameka and Kail paid an even higher price in terms of future gameplay. As part of their attempts to win the competition, both women agreed to not be eligible for the house's next five HoH competitions (Jameka was trying to prevent Eric's nomination).

After Jen won the Power of Veto competition, Dick publicly confronted Eric with his beliefs that Eric had been the game's true manipulator and (although he technically wasn't the week's HoH) boastfully announced that Eric would be replacing Jen on the chopping block. Danielle and Dick also formed a new alliance with Jen and Kail and tried to turn Jessica, Jameka, Dustin, and Amber against Eric, but despite some momentary wavering by Jessica, the foursome appeared to decide to remain loyal to Eric.

Once Eric was formally nominated for eviction, Dick stepped his anti-Eric campaigning. After remembering that Eric had previously told him that Amber had told Eric some personal information that would "sink her dead" if he disclosed it, Dick used the fact that Eric had told Dick he was saving the information for a moment when Amber began "playing the self-righteous thing" to turn Amber against Eric.

After learning that Eric was planning to use her secret (that she had twice used a false claim that she was pregnant to presumably keep her boyfriend from leaving her) against her, Amber -- citing the fact that she had previously voluntarily "sworn" on her daughter's life that she wouldn't vote for Eric this week as the reason why she couldn't change her own vote -- immediately began attempting to convince Dustin to become the fourth vote that Dick, Jen, and Zack would need to ensure Eric's eviction.

Dustin resisted Amber's suggestions and insisted that it was too soon for their alliance to turn on Eric, however Amber continued talking with Dick and Danielle and later told Dustin that if he wouldn't vote for Eric then she'd just betray her previous promise and vote for him herself. Recognizing that he no longer had any hope of convincing Amber that she was playing right into Dick's hands, Dustin (despite the fact that he apparently had no plans to actually do so) told Amber that he'd vote for Eric and prevent Amber from having to go back on her word.

"I don't like the way Dick plays this game, I want Dick out of this house more than I want Eric out of this house," Dustin told Amber before he agreed to vote for Eric. "All you're doing is listening to them... Amber, you are so a psycho right now... you need to calm down... [and] think with your head in the game."

After getting Dustin's promise that he'd vote for Eric, Amber -- now confident that Eric would be leaving the house shortly -- launched into a loud, emotional rant in which she confronted Eric about his plan to eventually use the "lies that I said to my boyfriend when I was on drugs" against her.

"Are you kidding me, what kind of person are you?" -- a question many Big Brother home viewers would no doubt also like to pose to Amber, who has also been caught making anti-Semitic remarks on the show's live Internet feeds -- shouted at Eric, who sat silently through the previously-recorded tirade that aired during last night's Big Brother broadcast that featured the live voting that resulted in Kail's eviction.

"That's so sick dude, that's twisted.... how dare you, how dare you dude... you're a devil in disguise, that's what you are," Amber continued. "You're so lucky that I swore on my daughter's life because I don't want to give you that vote. You got Nick out of here -- you fucking set him up -- you're a piece of shit and you're fucking going home. I hate you."

However despite Amber's emotional outburst, Dustin, Jessica, and Jameka all stayed true to their plans to evict Kail, leaving Dick, Jen, and Zack one vote short of the 4-3 majority needed to evict Eric.

After Kail's elimination was revealed, the rest of the houseguests -- excluding Danielle, who ineligible as the outgoing HoH, and Jameka, who was ineligible due to her PoV sacrifice -- competed in the sixth HoH competition.

Dubbed "Let's Make A Duel," the competition began with Danielle (the outgoing HoH) getting to decide which two houseguests would face off and attempt to correctly answer which eliminated Big Brother 8 houseguest had made a comment Julie would read aloud. The first houseguest to correctly answer the question would get to remain in the HoH competition and decide which two other remaining competitors would compete in the next face-off. The other face-off participant would be eliminated from the competition and the face-offs would continue until only one houseguest was left.

Unsurprisingly, Julie's well-documented ineptitude appeared to have an impact on the competition's outcome. After eliminating Dustin in the initial face-off pairing that Danielle was allowed to determine, a confident-looking Eric once again buzzed in first during his third-round face-off with Jessica. However Julie called out "Nick" (the question's answer) instead of "Eric" when she attempted to tell Eric to reveal his answer, and although his perplexed facial expressions and shoulder shrugs seemed to indicate that Eric was already aware the answer was Nick and wondering why Julie revealed it before he could, Julie invalidated the question.

"Oh, that was my fault, we'll move on to the next question," Julie commented before she quickly moved on to a new question that instead resulted in Eric's elimination and Jessica's advancement.

In the end, Jessica won the competition's final face-off with Jen -- a move that made her (potentially entirely as the result of the Julie's latest addition to her lengthy list of hosting flubs) Big Brother 8's sixth Head of Household.

(Photo credit CBS)

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